


keep the home fires burning

by synecdochic



Series: take these broken wings [10]
Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Gen, Imported, tradecraft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-03
Updated: 2010-02-03
Packaged: 2018-05-30 17:44:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6434197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/synecdochic/pseuds/synecdochic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On Atlantis, Spencer Griffith gets a message from home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	keep the home fires burning

**Author's Note:**

> (Originally [posted](https://synecdochic.dreamwidth.org/377256.html) 2010-02-03.
> 
> I'd realized I needed to do a little exploration of what was going on with Skipper in the Broken Wings/Howling/Roll With It continuity, since he's going to be playing more of a role in Roll With It as we roll. So I wrote this, and then I put it away because I didn't know if I was going to be doing more with it, and then I decided it didn't fit into _Roll With It_ and it stood as it was.
> 
> Takes place during May of _Howling_ and will make zero sense without it.

There are a thousand things about living in the City of the Ancients, the Lost City of Atlantis, that anyone would find odd, but the one thing Skipper can't get used to is the way the floor feels under his boots in the half-second between beginning his stride halfway across the galaxy and completing it in Atlantis's Gate room. Too slick, too quiet, nothing like the clang and clatter of the grate and ramp at the SGC. He's never tripped, but he's always convinced he's going to. It's just another reason to look at the Ancients and think _what the fuck_.

He makes the transition without falling this time, too, his body automatically compensating for the difference in texture beneath his heels. Last in line today; Major Lorne quit putting him in the rocking-chair after his second mission as a part of Lorne's team, when he proved he knew what he was doing, and a few weeks ago Lorne quietly promoted him to rear guard. Behind him, the wormhole closes down with its familiar soft sucking sound, and Skipper's already pulling the strap of his G36K over his head to hand it off to the armorer when he hears the sound everybody dreads: Colonel Sheppard, hands loosely curling over the balcony, leaning over and saying just loudly enough for his voice to reach Skipper's ears, "When you've got a second, Captain Griffith."

As commanding officers go, Sheppard's a good one, but his mild suggestion is anyone else's outright bark, and Skipper can feel the pit of his stomach lurching as he tries to remember if he's done anything lately that would make Sheppard have to get all quiet with him. "Sure thing, sir," he says. "Can I --" 

He makes the little gesture that says 'drop my pack and get settled', and Sheppard nods. "Take five," Sheppard suggests. "But not more. Head down to my office before you stop anywhere else."

That's weird. Weird enough that Skipper stops worrying about whether or not Sheppard's found out about the illicit trade of candy bars for movies both theatrical and pornographic (Uncle Cam fills Skipper's entire weight allowance with terabyte hard drives packed full of the good stuff, digitized, with every shipment) and starts getting that cold, sick feeling that's all too familiar, his mind flicking through the roster of who's stationed in what hot spots. Because Sheppard's face is completely normal, no hint of the empathy or sympathy that indicates he's about to deliver _the news_ , but looking at him, Skipper knows there's something Sheppard doesn't want to tell him.

(It's not telepathy. Not exactly. Other people have accused them of psychic powers before; Skipper gets accused of reading minds, Spencer gets accused of reading the future, but it's not any particular kind of psychic gift, just being damn good at putting things together damn quickly, and it just so happens that Skipper's better at seeing the implications in the _now_ and Spence is better at seeing the implication for the _then_. That's their story, and Skipper's sticking to it, no matter _how_ many stories of seers and witch-women run through the Griffith side of their heritage.) 

Nobody's looking at him with that combination of sympathy and pity as he drops his pack with the quartermaster and heads on through the halls, but that doesn't stop him from taking the corridors at double-time: not quite a jog, but not as slow as a walk. When there's something unpleasant coming up, Spence always dawdles ( _if you don't know it, it isn't real yet_ ); Skipper prefers to get it over with. The sooner you know, the sooner you can start dealing with it. 

Sheppard's sitting at his desk when Skipper arrives in his doorway, and he doesn't quite meet Skipper's eye. "Come on in, Captain," he says. "Have a seat. Shut the door behind you." 

Sheppard never tells you to shut the door.

Skipper does. When he turns back around, Sheppard's looking down at his hands, and Skipper can tell that Sheppard's looking for the best way to deliver bad news. _Really_ bad news, judging from the lines of his shoulders and the set of his jaw, and Skipper thinks of his brother, in another galaxy and on the front lines. For their entire life, they've always known when the other gets hurt (he remembers the time Spencer got knifed in Berlin and he'd woken up in a cold sweat halfway around the world, the pain tearing through his abdomen, knowing, _knowing_ ), but what if whatever connection that fuels it doesn't work from a galaxy away? 

"Just say it," he says. He can't bear the waiting. "Whatever it is, just say it."

He drops into the chair across from Sheppard's desk and grips its arms tightly enough that his knuckles ache. Sheppard sighs. Picks up his head, but doesn't meet Skipper's eyes; he fastens his gaze on a point just over Skipper's shoulder. "For obvious reasons, the program would prefer for this to stay quiet," Sheppard says, and the tendril of panic that was clutching Skipper's heart eases a little, because that's not how you start telling someone his brother is dead. "But General O'Neill asked me to tell you personally, because you're probably going to hear it from your family. The news came through in the databurst today while you were out. I'm -- very sorry to have to tell you this, but your brother was brought up on charges this week for theft and resale of classified technology. He's been court-martialed and dismissed."

For a second, it seems like Sheppard's speaking Greek. Sheppard pauses, waiting for him to say something, but Skipper's too busy trying to process. The words don't make sense. The _facts_ don't make sense; he's only been on Atlantis for eight months, but there's no way that eight months would have changed his brother that much, for him to be willing to do something like that, _able_ to do something like that: not ever, but _especially_ not when --

_Think , you idiot. Think._

His voice is a little too even in his own ears. "Did -- did the General say who brought the charges?" 

Sheppard's look turns a little more blank (it's Sheppard's hiding-some-emotion face, some part of Skipper neatly catalogs; he's done something to surprise the man. It's not telepathy. It's just good observational skills.) "Colonel Carter," Sheppard says. "She -- apparently it's been ongoing --"

Hard relief is followed by the immediate knowledge that he _cannot show it_. Not at all, not even a bit. Sheppard isn't stupid; for all that the man has the emotional sensitivity of a _turnip_ , he's got an incredibly well-developed sense for when something's fishy, and if Skipper's one note off the way his reaction has to be, he's going to trip that sense. So Skipper lets his eyes close and counts to a careful nine seconds before he says, "Is it okay if I take the rest of the day to --" Beat. Eyes open. "Unless you brought me in here because you need to question me, too --"

"No," Sheppard says, quickly. Too quickly; it means that the answer to the question of whether Skipper's under suspicion now is really _yes_ , and that's kinda gonna _suck_ , but it can't be helped. "No, go right ahead. If there's anything you need --"

"Yeah," Skipper says. Beat. Beat. "I'm just gonna --"

There's a piece of him (the same piece that always lives behind their eyes at moments like these) that finds the fact neither one of them has finished a sentence in the past two minutes bleakly hysterical. It's the same piece that choreographs his exit: one undirected handwave, features settling into a sort of stunned disbelief; half a second's pause, as though waiting for Sheppard to call him back; pushing his chair back from the desk, a split second of near-stumbling, quickly caught against the chair's back as though he's trying to look like he's perfectly fine. He makes sure to knock his shoulder against the doorframe as he goes, too, like he isn't registering where he's going. He can feel Sheppard's eyes on his back as he goes.

Inside -- on a level so deep only Spence can ever see it -- he's running the odds. Remembering. Last summer, a couple of weeks after they'd gotten out of GT&O, his final burn-in mission running security for one of the scientific missions, three weeks on P7J-221 (sunspot radio interference and a Gate twenty klicks from the exploration site, radio contact limited to twice a week when someone, usually him, hiked back to the Gate) and home to find their cousin dead and the funeral come and gone. Spence had briefed him about a conversation that had taken place on a porch swing in the midst of grief. _I volunteered us. They aren't sure who else is involved._ Conspiracy to mutiny, of course, but mutiny is a fine tradition at the SGC, and Spence had said Aunt Sam had spoken of General Jack O'Neill like she'd be calling him up right after and reading him in.

_General O'Neill asked me to tell you personally._

Five months ago the family listserv had blown into a flurry of speculation and recrimination when JD Nielson up and disappeared from Aunt Sassy and Uncle Everett's on the day after Christmas, and in the next email from Spencer, Spence hadn't said a word about what'd happened. Except he'd waxed nostalgic for three whole paragraphs about how much he missed the _chebureki_ in that little café on the ground floor of the Kotelnicheskaya Embankment building in Moskva, the one they'd spent so much time in back in '04, when Skipper was dating -- what _had_ her name been? Tomochka? Tanechka? 

And anyone reading would have only seen the same kind of relentlessly cheerful email the two of them try to send to each other (neither of them has ever had to be taught to read between the lines), and Skipper hadn't needed anything else to tell him there was something going on beyond what it looked like on the surface, because they'd been in Moscow to gather intel on the Chechen insurrection, and Tatya had been their counterpart in the Russian ground forces. And so Skipper had closed his eyes and offered up a prayer to Whomever might be listening that whatever JD had gone to do, it'd be done quickly and safely. (He hadn't had to add "and well" to the end. If JD does it, it'll be done well.)

And now it's May, and the promise Spence made to their family -- because Aunt Sam's family and so's JD -- has come due, and it's big enough -- _important_ enough -- that Major General Jack O'Neill sent a message (because it _was_ a message, one as clear as the paragraphs of reminiscence over a café with frankly mediocre pastry) across galaxies to let Skipper know that Spence had answered the call.

There isn't a damn fucking thing he can do from here but wait and pretend he doesn't have a fucking clue what's going on.

When he gets back to his room, Skipper's not surprised to see that his desktop email client is flashing the new-mail notice over and over and over again. The first thing he sees is an email from their father. A single line, _tell me you weren't a part of this,_ and Skipper knows that he's probably on Candid Camera right about now (the whole city's wired, straight down to the residential quarters, and Sheppard's not an _idiot_ so Skipper has to imagine Sheppard's watching, because it's what he'd do himself). So he stares at the screen for a few minutes and then buries his face in his hands, head bowed like he's staring at the desk and trying not to break down, counting off the seconds in his head (thirty-nine, forty, forty-one) before setting his teeth into his bottom lip, setting his inner director to watch over his body language and facial expressions, and typing a passel of lies for the man who taught them to always tell the truth.

They open the wormhole back to Earth twice a week for a databurst, Tuesday and Friday mornings, and emails in and out get stored on the network until they can be delivered. He'd be an idiot to think that _his_ wouldn't be scrutinized (Sheppard's greatest strength as a commander, Skipper thinks sometimes, is the way he causes everyone to underestimate him -- a tactic they're familiar with), so he thinks about it for a few minutes and then decides that yeah, he has to:

` From: beauregard.griffith@atl.cheyenne.usaf.mil`  
`To: spence.griffith@gmail.com`  
`Date: Thu, 20 May 2008 16:39:01 -0400 (EDT)`  
`Subject: What the fuck?`

` No, seriously, what the fucking fuck? `

` I have a hell of a lot of people screaming in my inbox and my CO just dragged me into a meeting to tell me that you've apparently gone fishing off the deep end without bait *or* a hook, so either this is some really *fucking* incredible prank that you just forgot to tell me about, or I don't know you one tenth as well as I thought I did. And if it is a prank, it is *not fucking funny*.`

` Is this the way you repay Ash's memory? Fucking over the service he died for? Do I have to send Uncle Cam to go beat the shit out of you?`

` -s.`

The people who're reading his email will take it as a reinforcement of his innocence. Spence, wherever he is -- if he has access to his email wherever he is -- will take it as a reassurance. _Message received._

He hits _send_ , and the message picks itself up and sends itself off to await the next pickup. Skipper stares at the two hundred and seventy-one unread messages in his inbox for a minute more, flicking the mouse's scrollwheel up and down (looking for any one of a few names, and not finding them), and then shuts the laptop with a soft _click_.

Then he goes to go find something (or some _one_ ) to beat the shit out of in the gym, because he'll take being pissed off over being scared any day.


End file.
